"Your autism must be mild." Response ideas?

Post Reply New Topic

I dunno .

I work very hard to hide my Aspergers from work colleagues and friends / family and its absolutely exhausting - physically and mentally

Relative to Scotch Bonnets, perhaps.

...and I didn't even realize you had FAS until you started speaking. High-five, being high functioning is awesome.

"Thank you. You're very high-functioning for a jackass."
"Oh, I still have issues. For instance, I can't tell if that was intentional or if you're trying to give me a compliment."
"Really? Damn. I need to try harder."

I like that for three reasons: Autism related, I like spicy food and it's a black T-shirt. I own 8 plain black T-shirts and wear them exclusively under my other shirts. I love black T-shirts!

Black T-shirts are incredible. I pretty much wear nothing but them and black yoga pants.

Question. Are they burnouts that I was experiencing or some sort of mental breakdown as it took me from around 6 to 18 months to fully recover from each one or does this vary from person to person?

What I experience as burnout were only in cycles as I was experiencing them due to the part time temorary job cycles (Summer work and Christmas work) in which I would take on temporary low hours part time work and though I would finish through to the end of the work period, I would end up in quite an internal mess. Each time if happened it hit me harder then the one before. From what I can remember, the first time I had this experience was back in 2007 when I used to work full time and is the last time I worked full time. I can't work at the moment as if I did I would end up in big trouble if the cycle continues.

“Your Autism must be mild”

“That’s so weird: I was thinking the very same thing about your powers of observation.”

I've never really known how to quantify autism but in my own case I'm not too offended by the "it's mild" observation.

I've taken issue with, "we're all a bit autistic" but my explanations never garnered much of a response. I give up!

Whatever you want. No response is required.

They are just acknowledging what you said.

This Q was intended for others, but I'll respond for the sake of drawing attention to it and maybe something will come of it.

Putting meltdowns aside, I don't burnout so much as go into avoidance --- I will find an interest to focus on at the expense of everything else. In the case of personal loss, it took me 1-2 years to recover from each (numbness with occasional acute sadness).